


It's Your Fifth Birthday

by Beachrat



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 18:45:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17565947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beachrat/pseuds/Beachrat
Summary: Your older sister teaches you what little fighting skills she has picked up from old martial arts movies. She teaches you something about balance, and you find yourself repeating what she taught you for years to come. It will come in handy, even with metal limbs. Especially with metal limbs. You wobble as you stand on your left leg, and your sister pushes you over and laughs. "You're so skinny," she says. "Everyone will push you over." You throw a pillow at her and she stumbles back. You are a natural with projectiles.





	It's Your Fifth Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Something of a headcanony biography for Junkrat, since Blizzard won't give us any. I've been editing this for months and I'm sure there's still a bunch of things in this that I'd like to edit, but I'm putting this up partly for a roleplay blog on Tumblr I've been setting up... Hopefully you like reading my hurried writing though. I intended for this to be pretty short, but it went in a different direction than I intended, so whether or not it's a satisfying read has yet to be seen. (I've written so much better in the past...)
> 
> Lots of stuff implied here is based on personal experience.

 

It's your fifth birthday. There is no such thing as an irradiated wasteland, or phantom pains, or your first peg leg breaking under the weight of your body. You dress up like a pirate and yell, "ahoy, matey!" Most of your toys have ripcords, because you like the sounds they make. Your toy car speeds along the floor. You are happy.

 

You grow up among four siblings, all of which agree that you are the smallest, even when your younger brother is born. All you can do is pout, but you don't blame them for thinking this way. You have always been the runt. Your siblings love you, though. Life is good.

 

When you turn ten, your sisters make a valiant attempt to do your hair and make-up. You look like a clown, but you're ten, and they're not that much older. Your older brother walks in and says you'd make a great court jester, but your sisters pull him in and do his make-up the same way. Now you are both court jesters. Soon enough, you will be the only court jester. It's not a legacy you'd be interested in, if not for the fond memories.

 

It's your thirteenth birthday, and you're not as superstitious as your family, but later you find out they were onto something with all the lucky charms they gave you that day. You don't much care for the rabbit feet, but you pin the rest of them on the cork board above your bed. Your favorites are the ones your auntie brings home from China. You grow so much taller, and your sisters hate you for it. Now they can't do your make-up properly. They use you to get snacks off of the high shelves. Your arms are clumsy though, and various objects clatter onto the floor. You curse and your mother glares at you, at which you cover your mouth with your hands. _Sorry, mum._

 

It's your sweet sixteen, and your older sister teaches you what little fighting skills she has picked up from old martial arts movies. She teaches you something about balance, and you find yourself repeating what she taught you for years to come. It will come in handy, even with metal limbs. _Especially_ with metal limbs. You wobble as you stand on your left leg, and your sister pushes you over and laughs. "You're so skinny," she says. "Everyone will push you over." You throw a pillow at her and she stumbles back. You are a natural with projectiles.

 

Later, she treats you to boba milk tea with strawberry flavoring, and it's the best, most relaxing drink you've ever ingested.

 

Or ever _will_ ingest.

 

You're nineteen now and last year your birthday passed without a hitch. You're not sure what happened yet (they won't tell you), but your family demands you stay inside. A year passes. Two years pass. One by one, your siblings succumb to radiation poisoning. You do not. You can't remember what you had for breakfast. You're told to take these pills, shed your clothes. Your favorite t-shirt goes into a plastic bag, never to be seen again. Your home is raided by people whose concerns aren't the radiation any more. You're still green so you can't defend yourself as well as you'd like. They take most of your auntie's charms, your sisters' jewelry, the tech. Your younger brother is taken and he doesn't come back. You watch your mother cry when she thinks you aren't looking. You press your hands to your mouth to silence yourself.

 

You pass twenty-one and you realize you're now older than your oldest sibling before he died. The thought crosses your mind for a split second before you put the last screws on the twelfth trap you are setting up around your home. Your traps have nasty teeth. You grew up quickly after the deaths of your parents. You look out the window and the omnium calls for you. Someday, you will go there. You're waiting for your rations to run out. And maybe, just maybe, you're a little scared. You will need weapons. You set off a firecracker to chase away the possums. You don't want them getting into your traps. Then _you_ get in one of your traps.

 

You pay for it.

 

You start experimenting with explosives because you are interested in their workings. Then you become obsessed because you need to be.

 

You pay for this, too.

 

You have dreams about bleeding out on the floor by the time you've made it to twenty-two. Your arm and leg have been in bandages for only a short while but you have already begun learning how to create with your left hand. You fashion yourself a new arm, because you are sick of the weird tingles, even if an artificial limb won't help them. You don't give yourself the luxury of a new foot. Now you can relive your childhood dream. "Ahoy, matey," you mutter to yourself, and stomp on the floor. You wince when the wood of your leg creaks.

 

What an inconvenient childhood dream. Why don't you go for metal, now?

 

Twenty-three and the third iteration of your new limbs work well enough. After you stop stubbornly holding onto your pirate fantasy, anyway. You stopped being afraid to leave the house last year but you need to stop putting off your plans to abandon the place, it has too much history now. When you decide this, the first thing you do is grab everything you can carry and make your way to the omnium. Other people seem to have already been there, even made their homes there (there's a giant sign with "Junkertown" scrawled on it), but you make discoveries. Big ones. You find a treasure. Or something you can _make_ into a treasure. You will not tell anyone what it is. They will not know of your vision of the future. They might not understand. In fact, you've already forgotten they exist. It's New Year's Eve, but you can't tell. Days blur together and you try to keep track, but you're always a day or two off. Why? You set off another firecracker anyway, for the hell of it.

 

Twenty-four and two and a half months. Not like you were able to keep track or anything. Your grenade launcher isn't enough for this trip. Your traps aren't enough. You made mines but sometimes they don't go off. Everything you make breaks, and you improve it, and it breaks again, and you fix it, and the cycle continues until your equipment stops failing you in the most crucial moments at the very least. You have left behind your old home and made a new one in an empty shack you found in Junkertown. It's quite cozy. One day you come home to people scavenging for the little you have, and you barely manage to kill them all by blowing up the whole place.

 

Whoops.

 

Twenty-five. You've managed to save your treasure, but you're sore about losing your new home. In an attempt to distract yourself from the fallout of yet another home raid you hobble over to the Scrapyard to watch the latest competition that everyone in Junkertown has been so excited about. What appears to be a giant metallic hamster ball rolls into the fray and flings itself into a group of Junkers. It gives you an idea. Remote bombs are something you have nearly perfected, but you want a big one that rolls. Maybe like the old toys you used to have.

 

Oh yeah. You can work with this.

 

You meet a new friend. "Friend"? Friend. You decide this somewhere along the way. His name is Roadhog. He is good because he listens to you, or at least pretends he does. With him, you steal and you steal and you steal. You travel, and you steal some more, and you stash everything you have in quite a few interesting locations around the world. It's the Hog's advice, he brings out the responsible man in you. Sometimes you say something, and he tells you without words that you've already talked about it. For crying out loud, you cannot remember what on God's green earth you were thinking about a minute ago. Has it always been like that? Doesn't matter. You remember your birthday being somewhere in March, or maybe April, so that's when you whistle a song to yourself when you tape together the remaining parts of your newest grenade launcher. You've gone through several poorly taped together portable contraptions. Damn, you just want to launch bombs, how hard can it be? Despite this, the rest of your weaponry works perfectly now, even the tire. Your dedication is to credit for it being done so quickly. It's getting cold. You could go for some mittens.

 

You've been taking pills for years now. You can't remember which ones were for the radiation and which were for the ADHD and you never remember taking your testosterone shots because your thoughts are so loud. Twenty-five and three months is the moment you stop taking the pills and it's made you more ambitious. Roadhog puts up with you and your plans for the future in exchange for that 50% share. You have a grand vision, but aren't quite sure what it is any more. The Hog seems to know quite well, though, which would concern you if he wasn't your friend. You read him as he reads you, and you stick together because, well, now you have to. It causes trouble for the Queen. (Not that you haven't caused trouble for her before. You find out whose shack you blew up about a month ago.) You scoff at her distaste for you and make a joke about her having a crush on you. Hog sounds like he's dying. "You're dreaming." You make a plan to blow up her lair.

 

Yeah. Life is good.


End file.
